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THE VALLEY OF THE MOON
table. It meant nothing to her that in her case she must fi rst
prepare the breakfast. Promptly appeared in the house a yard
of dotted Swiss muslin, and Saxon was deep in experimenting
on patterns for herself, and in sorting her bits of laces for suitable trimmings. The resultant dainty creation won Mercedes
Higgins’ enthusiastic approval.
Saxon made for herself simple house slips of pretty gingham, with neat low collars turned back from her fresh round
throat. She crocheted yards of laces for her underwear, and
made Battenberg in abundance for her table and for the bureau. A great achievement, that aroused Billy’s applause, was
an Afghan for the bed. She even ventured a rag carpet, which,
the women’s magazines informed her, had newly returned
into fashion. As a matter of course she hemstitched the best
table linen and bed linen they could afford.
As the happy months went by she was never idle. Nor was
Billy forgotten. When the cold weather came on she knitted him wristlets, which he always religiously wore from the
house and pocketed immediately thereafter. The two sweaters
she made for him, however, received a better fate, as did the
slippers which she insisted on his slipping into, on the evenings they remained at home.
The hard practical wisdom of Mercedes Higgins proved
of immense help, for Saxon strove with a fervor almost religious to have everything of the best and at the same time to
be saving. Here she faced the fi nancial and economic problem
of keeping house in a society where the cost of living rose
faster than the wages of industry. And here the old woman
taught her the science of marketing so thoroughly that she
181
JACK LONDON
made a dollar of Billy’s go half as far again as the wives of the
neighborhood made the dollars of their men go.
Invariably, on Saturday night, Billy poured his total wages
into her lap. He never asked for an accounting of what she did
with it, though he continually reiterated that he had never fed
so well in his life. And always, the wages still untouched in her
lap, she had him take out what he estimated he would need
for spending money for the week to come. Not only did she
bid him take plenty but she insisted on his taking any amount
extra that he might desire at any time through the week. And,
further, she insisted he should not tell her what it was for.
“You’ve always had money in your pocket,” she reminded
him, “and there’s no reason marriage should change that. If
it did, I’d wish I’d never married you. Oh, I know about men
when they get together. First one treats and then another, and
it takes money. Now if you can’t treat just as freely as the rest
of them, why I know you so well that I know you’d stay away
from them. And that wouldn’t be right... to you, I mean. I want
you to be together with men. It’s good for a man.”
And Billy buried her in his arms and swore she was the
greatest little bit of woman that ever came down the pike.
“Why,” he jubilated; “not only do I feed better, and live
more comfortable, and hold up my end with the fellows; but
I’m actually saving money – or you are for me. Here I am,
with furniture being paid for regular every month, and a little
woman I’m mad over, and on top of it money in the bank. How
much is it now?”
“Sixty-two dollars,” she told him. “Not so bad for a rainy
day. You might get sick, or hurt, or something happen.”
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THE VALLEY OF THE MOON
It was in mid-winter, when Billy, with quite a deal of obvious reluctance, broached a money matter to Saxon. His old
friend, Billy Murphy, was laid up with la grippe, and one of his
children, playing in the street, had been seriously injured by
a passing wagon. Billy Murphy, still feeble after two weeks in
bed, had asked Billy for the loan of fi fty dollars.
“It’s perfectly safe,” Billy concluded to Saxon. “I’ve known
him since we was kids at the Durant School together. He’s
straight as a die.”
“That’s got nothing to do with it,” Saxon chided. “If you
were single you’d have lent it to him immediately, wouldn’t
you?”
Billy nodded.
“Then it’s no different because you’re married. It’s your
money, Billy.”
“Not by a damn sight,” he cried. “It ain’t mine. It’s ourn.
And I wouldn’t think of lettin’ anybody have it without seein’
you fi rst.”
“I hope you didn’t tell him that,” she said with quick concern.
“Nope,” Billy laughed. “I knew, if I did, you’d be madder’n
a hatter. I just told him I’d try an’ fi gure it out. After all, I was
sure you’d stand for it if you had it.”
“Oh, Billy,” she murmured, her voice rich and low with
love; “maybe you don’t know it, but that’s one of the sweetest
things you’ve said since we got married.”
The more Saxon saw of Mercedes Higgins the less did she
understand her. That the old woman was a close-fi sted miser,
Saxon soon learned. And this trait she found hard to recon-
183
JACK LONDON
cile with her tales of squandering. On the other hand, Saxon
was bewildered by Mercedes’ extravagance in personal matters. Her underlinen, hand-made of course, was very costly.
The table she set for Barry was good, but the table for herself
was vastly better. Yet both tables were set on the same table.
While Barry contented himself with solid round steak, Mercedes ate tenderloin. A huge, tough muttonchop on Barry’s
plate would be balanced by tiny French chops on Mercedes’
plate. Tea was brewed in separate pots. So was coffee. While
Barry gulped twenty-fi ve cent tea from a large and heavy mug,
Mercedes sipped three-dollar tea from a tiny cup of Belleek,
rose-tinted, fragile as all egg-shell. In the same manner, his
twenty-fi ve cent coffee was diluted with milk, her eighty cent
Turkish with cream.
“‘Tis good enough for the old man,” she told Saxon.
“He knows no better, and it would be a wicked sin to waste it
on him.”
Little traffi ckings began between the two women. After
Mercedes had freely taught Saxon the loose-wristed facility of
playing accompaniments on the ukulele, she proposed an exchange. Her time was past, she said, for such frivolities, and she
offered the instrument for the breakfast cap of which Saxon
had made so good a success.
“It’s worth a few dollars,” Mercedes said. “It cost me twenty, though that was years ago. Yet it is well worth the value of
the cap.”
“But wouldn’t the cap be frivolous, too?” Saxon queried,
though herself well pleased with the bargain.
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THE VALLEY OF THE MOON
“‘Tis not for my graying hair,” Mercedes frankly disclaimed.
“I shall sell it for the money. Much that I do, when the rheumatism is not maddening my fi ngers, I sell. La la, my dear, ‘tis
not old Barry’s fi fty a month that’ll satisfy all my expensive
tastes. ‘Tis I that make up the difference. And old age needs
money as never youth needs it. Some day you will learn for
yourself.”
“I am well satisfi ed with the trade,” Saxon said. “And I shall
make me another cap when I can lay aside enough for the material.”
“Make several,” Mercedes advised. “I’ll sell them for you,
keeping, of course, a small commission for my services. I can
give you six dollars apiece for them. We will consult about
them. The profi t will more than provide material for your own.”
CHAPTER V
Four eventful things happened in the course of the winter.
Bert and Mary got married and rented a cottage in the neighborhood three blocks away. Billy’s wages were cut, along with
the wages of all the teamsters in Oakland. Billy took up shaving with a safety razor. And, fi nally, Saxon was proven a false
prophet and Sara h a true one.
Saxon made up her mind, beyond any doubt, ere she confi ded the news to Billy. At fi rst, while still suspecting, she had
felt a frightened sinking of the heart and fear of the unknown
and unexperienced. Then had come economic fear, as she contemplated the increased expense entailed. But by the time she
had made surety doubly sure, all was swept away before a wave
of passionate gladness. HERS AND BILLY’S! The phrase was
continually in her mind, and each recurrent thought of it
brought an actual physical pleasure-pang to her heart.
The night she told the news to Billy, he withheld his own
news of the wage-cut, and joined with her in welcoming the
little one.
“What’ll we do? Go to the theater to celebrate?” he asked,
relaxing the pressure of his embrace so that she might speak.
“Or suppose we stay in, just you and me, and... and the three
of us?”
186
THE VALLEY OF THE MOON
“Stay in,” was her verdict. “I just want you to hold me, and
hold me, and hold me.”
“That’s what I wanted, too, only I wasn’t sure, after bein’ in
the house all day, maybe you’d want to go out.”
There was frost in the air, and Billy brought the Morris
chair in by the kitchen stove. She lay cuddled in his arms, her
head on his shoulder, his cheek against her hair.
“We didn’t make no mistake in our lightning marriage
with only a week’s courtin’,” he refl ected aloud. “Why, Saxon,
we’ve been courtin’ ever since just the same. And now... my
God, Saxon, it’s too wonderful to be true. Think of it! Ourn!
The three of us! The little rascal! I bet he’s goin’ to be a boy.
An’ won’t I learn ‘m to put up his fi sts an’ take care of himself!
An’ swimmin’ too. If he don’t know how to swim by the time
he’s six...”
“And if HE’S a girl?”
“SHE’S goin’ to be a boy,” Billy retorted, joining in the playful misuse of pronouns.
And both laughed and kissed, and sighed with content.
“I’m goin’ to turn pincher, now,” he announced, after quite an
interval of meditation. “No more drinks with the boys. It’s me
for the water wagon. And I’m goin’ to ease down on smokes.
Huh! Don’t see why I can’t roll my own cigarettes. They’re
ten times cheaper’n tailor-mades. An’ I can grow a beard. The
amount of money the barbers get out of a fellow in a year
would keep a baby.”
“Just you let your beard grow, Mister Roberts, and I’ll get
a divorce,” Saxon threatened. “You’re just too handsome and
strong with a smooth face. I love your face too much to have it
187
JACK LONDON
covered up. – Oh, you dear! you dear! Billy, I never knew what
happiness was until I came to live with you.”
“Nor me neither.”
“And it’s always going to be so?”
“You can just bet,” he assured her.
“I thought I was going to be happy married,” she went on;
“but I never dreamed it would be like this.” She turned her
head on his shoulder and kissed his cheek. “Billy, it isn’t happiness. It’s heaven.”
And Billy resolutely kept undivulged the cut in wages. Not
until two weeks later, when it went into effect, and he poured
the diminished sum into her lap, did he break it to her. The
next day, Bert and Mary, already a month married, had Sunday
dinner with them, and the matter came up for discussion. Bert
was particularly pessimistic, and muttered dark hints of an impending strike in the railroad shops.
“If you’d all shut your traps, it’d be all right,” Mary criticized. “These union agitators get the railroad sore. They give
me the cramp, the way they butt in an’ stir up trouble. If I was
boss I’d cut the wages of any man that listened to them.”
“Yet you belonged to the laundry workers’ union,” Saxon
rebuked gently.
“Because I had to or I wouldn’t a-got work. An’ much good
it ever done me.”
“But look at Billy,” Bert argued. “The teamsters ain’t ben
sayin’ a word, not a peep, an’ everything lovely, and then, bang,
right in the neck, a ten per cent cut. Oh, hell, what chance have
we got? We lose. There’s nothin’ left for us in this country we’ve
made and our fathers an’ mothers before us. We’re all shot to
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THE VALLEY OF THE MOON
pieces. We can see our fi nish – we, the old stock, the children
of the white people that broke away from England an’ licked
the tar outa her, that freed the slaves, an’ fought the Indians,
‘an made the West! Any gink with half an eye can see it comin’.”
“But what are we going to do about it?” Saxon questioned
anxiously.
“Fight. That’s all. The country’s in the hands of a gang of
robbers. Look at the Southern Pacifi c. It runs California.”
“Aw, rats, Bert,” Billy interrupted. “You’re talkin’ through
your lid. No railroad can ran the government of California.”
“You’re a bonehead,” Bert sneered. “And some day, when
it’s too late, you an’ all the other boneheads’ll realize the fact.
Rotten? I tell you it stinks. Why, there ain’t a man who wants
to go to state legislature but has to make a trip to San Francisco, an’ go into the S. P. offi ces, an’ take his hat off, an’ humbly ask permission. Why, the governors of California has been
railroad governors since before you and I was born. Huh! You
can’t tell me. We’re fi nished. We’re licked to a frazzle. But it’d
do my heart good to help string up some of the dirty thieves
before I passed out. D’ye know what we are? – we old white
stock that fought in the wars, an’ broke the land, an’ made all
this? I’ll tell you. We’re the last of the Mohegans.”
“He scares me to death, he’s so violent,” Mary said with
unconcealed hostility. “If he don’t quit shootin’ off his mouth
he’ll get fi red from the shops. And then what’ll we do? He
don’t consider me. But I can tell you one thing all right, all
right. I’ll not go back to the laundry.” She held her right hand
up and spoke with the solemnity of an oath. “Not so’s you can
see it. Never again for yours truly.”
189
JACK LONDON
“Oh, I know what you’re drivin’ at,” Bert said with asperity.
“An’ all I can tell you is, livin’ or dead, in a job or out, no matter what happens to me, if you will lead that way, you will, an’
there’s nothin’ else to it.”
“I guess I kept straight before I met you,” she came back
with a toss of the head. “And I kept straight after I met you,
which is going some if anybody should ask you.”
Hot words were on Bert’s tongue, but Saxon intervened
and brought about peace. She was concerned over the outcome
of their marriage. Both were highstrung, both were quick and
irritable, and their continual clashes did not augur well for
their future.
The safety razor was a great achievement for Saxon. Privily
she conferred with a clerk she knew in Pierce’s hardware store
and made the purchase. On Sunday morning, after breakfast, when Billy was starting to go to the barber shop, she led
him into the bedroom, whisked a towel aside, and revealed
the razor box, shaving mug, soap, brush, and lather all ready.
Billy recoiled, then came back to make curious investigation.
He gazed pityingly at the safety razor.
“Huh! Call that a man’s tool!”
“It’ll do the work,” she said. “It does it for thousands of men
every day.”
But Billy shook his head and backed away.
“You shave three times a week,” she urged. “That’s fortyfi ve cents. Call it half a dollar, and there are fi fty-two weeks in
the year. Twenty-six dollars a year just for shaving. Come on,
dear, and try it. Lots of men swear by it.”
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